In week 5, Carolina has a bye.

In week 10, Arizona has a bye.

In week 11, San Francisco has a bye.

And in week 12, Pittsburgh has a bye.

And each of those teams, in the week following that bye, play the Seahawks. That gives Seattle a league-high four opponents in 2015 coming off of their bye week. In addition, the Seahawks play the Rams in week 16, when St. Louis will be coming off of ten days’ rest, having played on Thursday Night Football against the Bucs in week 15. You can view the full schedule here.

There is one saving grace for the Seahawks: all five games take place in the friendly confines of CenturyLink Field. Is that a coincidence? Probably not, although don’t expect Seahawks fans to give the NFL the benefit of the doubt here.

Playing four opponents off of a bye is a lot (tho not unheard of). In fact, only one other team has more than two such games, and that’s Washington. In weeks 5, 6, and 11, the Jets, Bucs, and Giants have their respective byes. And those teams are Washington’s opponents in weeks 6, 7, and 12 (the Jets game is on the road; the other two are home games).

In week 8, New England plays on Thursday Night Football, and week 12 is Thanksgiving, when the Dallas annually plays. The Patriots and Cowboys play Washington in weeks 9 and 13, respectively, giving New England and Dallas extra rest before their Washington game, too. ^[1]One might argue that in New England’s case, this is canceled out by the fact that Washington has a week 8 bye, so the Patriots get no advantage here. On the other hand, every team gets a bye, … Continue reading

Seattle and Washington are the only teams in 2015 that play five games against teams coming off of extra rest. On the other hand, we have Tampa Bay and Carolina. Neither the Bucs nor the Panthers play a single opponent coming off of extra rest in 2015! Carolina has its bye before a trip to Seattle and a Thursday game (Thanksgiving) before a trip to New Orleans, so the extra rest on the team side (rather than the opponent side) could come in handy. Tampa Bay travels to Washington after its bye and hosts the Bears after the Thursday night game against the Seahawks, and well, the Bucs could use all the help they can get.

The table below shows how many games each franchise will play this season against teams coming off extra rest, defined as playing a game against an opponent that just had a bye or a Thursday game. ^[2]Note: The Lions and Packers both play on Thanksgiving, and then play each other a week later. Technically, when those two teams play in week 13, they will each be playing teams coming off of a … Continue reading

As is becoming customary, the Bills don’t fare too well here. Buffalo plays the Patriots in week 2 after New England kicks off the season on Thursday night, although those roles are reversed when the teams square off in week 11. Buffalo also plays the Giants in week 4 and the Dolphins in week 9 with both teams having ten days’ rest before the game. This may not be enough to ignite an article about the topic from the team’s website, but let’s not underestimate things here.

The Saints, Lions, and Raiders all play zero games against teams coming off of byes, and just one game against teams that have 10 days of rest. Every little bit counts, right?

For New England, the glory schedule days of years past is gone. In 2012 and 2013, the Patriots did not face a single team coming off of a bye week, and had just one game in those two years against a team that was coming off of 10 days’ rest.

But in 2014, New England had two games against teams coming off of byes, and it led to two Patriots blowouts (the bye week did not do much for Cincinnati or Indianapolis last year). The Patriots had one game against a team coming off of 10 days’ rest, and that was yet another New England blowout (over Denver). This year, the Patriots have four games against teams with extra rest, with three of those of the Thursday variety. On the other hand, New England and Pittsburgh both benefit from having one extra mini-bye week. Every team plays a Thursday night game, but New England and Pittsburgh get a bit of a break by having extra rest before their week two game by virtue of playing in the opener.

One other scheduling quirk: the Jets have just six true road games this year, including just four of the team’s first thirteen games. New York plays Miami in London in week 4, and the Dolphins chose to give up a home game for that event. And the Jets/Giants game this year is a Giants home game, giving the Jets nine games during the 2015 regular season at MetLife Stadium. New York has a rough final three games to the season, but the Jets schedule lines up nicely for them to be in contention after 14 weeks.